Mexico

2010

While a first glance, The Irish-Mexican Alliance might seem
like an unorthodox partnership, last night's poetry and music fundraising event for CPJ at Connolly's Pub
near Times Square proved otherwise.

Two years have passed since the killing of El Diario journalist José Armando Rodríguez Carreón, known to
his friends as "El Choco," and no legal process has begun to shed light on the
crime committed on November 13, 2008. Faced with the reality of impunity, his
widow, Blanca Martínez, asserted that her only hope lies in God.

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On Monday, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington hosted a
panel discussion on the press freedom crisis in Mexico. Carlos Lauría and I
spoke about CPJ report "Silence or Death in the Mexican Press" and the results
of our meeting in September with President Felipe Calderón. Dolía Estevez described
the event in a blog she posted yesterday. I was struck by the remarks made
by Dallas Morning News correspondent
Alfredo Corchado, one of Mexico's bravest and best reporters. Excerpts from his
prepared remarks are below:

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On
Monday, before a large audience of government officials, representatives of
NGOs, reporters, and students, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas,
Carlos Lauría,
said that the level of crime violence, and corruption facing the press in
Mexico, where more than 30 journalists have been murdered or have gone missing
since Felipe Calderón took office in December of 2006, is destroying the
country's journalism and forcing many reporters into self-censorship or exile.
"Not only the drug trade and corruption are not being covered, but basic daily
sensitive issues are being ignored as well," he said. "Self-censorship is
pervasive."

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The Mexican government is currently putting together
a program, it says, that will help reduce one of the most brutal problems for
journalists: their lack of protection from death threats from drug cartels,
government officials, and ordinary criminals. Senior officials at the Ministry
of Interior told CPJ that they expect to offer at-risk journalists a range of
protective measures, including bodyguards, armored cars and/or stipends to
relocate to other parts of the country.

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Last week marked the fourth anniversary of the murder of Brad
Will, a 36-year-old American activist and journalist who was shot while
covering anti-government protests in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. His
murderers remain at large.

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On his blog, El Oso, David
Sasaki has just finished up the
third and last part in his series, "Internet Censorship
and Freedom of Expression in Latin America." It's a brilliant overview of current political and social pressures on free speech and online reporting in the region.

Some key observations:

Direct governmental censorship in Latin America
remains largely non-existent. Even occasional "murky,"
anecdotal evidence is mostly confined to Cuba and perhaps
Venezuela. Sasaki does a great job of collating what's been
rumored so far. The OpenNet Initiative has said
it will shortly publish updated research.

Litigation over content is the most widespread threat
to free expression online across the region. As CPJ has
reported for many years, criminal defamation laws and overbroad
judicial decisions affect independent journalism in many Latin
American countries. The large numbers of ongoing cases against
individual Net users and their hosting services show that this
risk has not diminished online.

Brazil and Chile are leading the way in attempts to create
Internet-era regulation, with broad participation. Other
countries could learn a lot from watching how this new body of
law develops, despite occasional missteps (or perhaps because of them).

The above will not surprise close watchers of the Latin American
Internet, and it certainly fits with CPJ's own observations there.
The real meat of this article, though, lies in the examples. From
decades old videos of famous censored
Argentine satire to a brief glimpse of the world of
Mexican botnets (a collection of hijacked computers used remotely by criminals), it's a compelling and informative read. Check
out
part one, an overview of the idea of Internet regulation;
part two, a survey of intermediary liability cases in the
region; and
part three, which offers a closer look at direct Net censorship in Latin
America, as well as brief glances at Net neutrality, privacy and
cybercrime.

November 2, 2010 3:12 PM ET

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The line of people at the stairs leading down to the Great Hall at Cooper Union
in lower Manhattan formed early and turned into an audience of 500. They came to
hear prominent Mexican and U.S. writers and free expression advocates assess,
denounce, and seek solutions to the wave of violence wracking Mexican media.

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"Tell them not to kill me!"
pleads a man in the opening lines of a fascinating tale of violence with the same
title by one of Mexico's
most esteemed writers, Juan Rulfo. It is, sadly, the same cry for help that
Mexican journalists are sending out to the world today. On Tuesday, October 19,
prominent writers and journalists from Mexico
and the United States will
gather in New York for "State of Emergency: Censorship by Bullet in Mexico," an evening of readings and discussions
about the threats facing members of the Mexican press who report on drug-related
violence.

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Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa had a message to deliver and it wasn't about press freedom. After hearing the
concerns presented by a joint delegation from CPJ and the Miami-based
Inter American Press Association last week, the president wanted us to know something: He
didn't go looking for a fight against the drug cartels.